The present invention relates generally to information management and more particularly to multi-media-based, real-time, interactive information management for supporting collaborative interaction among a group of participants.
In any project involving a group of people, cooperative and coordinated interaction typically is key to the success or failure of the undertaking. The project begins with a series of meetings to identify the desired goals, and to begin understanding the tasks needed to achieve the goal. Numerous meetings subsequently follow to further identify how to achieve the desired goals. In an engineering setting, for example, this typically involves teams of engineers holding several meetings to understand the technical hurdles they face, and to develop and design the components which constitute the end product. In a marketing situation, product managers and sales persons convene frequently to define the product line or services, to identify potential markets and target customers, to develop advertising strategies and product roll-out scenarios, and so on.
As a project continues along, various groups of the project team will have periodic meetings to address and resolve issues and problems which inevitably arise during the course of any significant endeavor. Meetings will take place to assess the progress of the project, to assess the scope of the effort in view of changing external conditions, to re-order priorities and so on.
Sometimes, the meetings are difficult to convene. For example, engineers from various offices in geographically distant locations might need to participate. Certain members may not be conveniently available; e.g. they are on the road at a customer site.
The creation and dissemination of information is often inefficiently managed. Conventionally, attendees in a meeting record the events of the meeting by taking notes, whether handwritten, or entered in a portable computer such as a laptop computer, or entered into a personal data accessory (PDA), or by video taping the meeting. Notes of the meeting events are recorded from the point of view of the observer. Consequently information that is omitted and retained will be a function of the experiences and understandings (or misunderstandings) of the observer. In addition, note taking activity tends to distract from the discussion taking place, and so it is possible that certain points of interest might be missed.
Such inefficiencies of information management are exacerbated when in so-called “brainstorming sessions,” when ideas are presented at a quick pace and many trains of thought are produced. Participants generally stop taking notes at that point, being frustrated by the flurry of information being presented. The situation is further aggravated for those attendees who are at remote locations, being unable to fully participate in the session.
Documentation may not always be readily available. For example, a topic may arise which was unexpected and for which the relevant materials are not at hand. This creates inefficiency because another meeting must then be scheduled with the risk that the needed participants may have conflicting schedules. At other times, the meeting may need to be stalled until needed material is obtained.
Notes and ideas developed from previous meetings are not always available. The shear volume of information accumulated over the course of many meetings may require the expenditure of much human effort to sort through the material and to render it in a readily accessible form. A problem, of course, is that one cannot know a priori what information will be relevant in subsequent meetings. Consequently, a fully cross-referenced index is desirable, but tedious and typically not made.
Although computers have tremendously improved document management and workflow process in many business settings, there has been very poor computer support for the creative and intellectual activities which take place in meetings and brainstorming sessions in the work environment. Means for capturing these events is important not only for preserving corporate knowledge, but also for facilitating the dissemination of ideas and the assimilation of information. With the availability of ever-increasing processor speed, communication bandwidth, and storage capacity, overcoming the technical impediments are no longer an issue. Instead, the effective coordination and utilization of vast amounts of information generated when individuals collaborate toward a common goal become the challenge.
A need therefore exists for a method and system to provide information support services during a meeting. It is desirable to provide a method and system which can effectively capture the events of the meeting. There is a need to provide access and retrieval of information that can facilitate the progress of the meeting. It is further desirable to provide these capabilities with minimal human intervention so as not to distract the participants in the meeting.